This harvest season, the trade war with China has added to the farm economy’s woes, as producers deal with lower crop prices and high costs.
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Wisconsin landscape | Photo by Greg Conniff for Wisconsin Examiner
President Donald Trump’s tariffs are becoming a major drain on Wisconsin’s agricultural economy. China stopped purchasing U.S. soybeans amid a new trade war this spring, triggering a price collapse and leaving farmers wondering what to do with the bumper crop they are now harvesting. Cranberry growers say they’re facing low prices and market uncertainty, too, as other countries turn away their products because of tariffs.
Small wonder the latest ag economy barometer published by Purdue University on Oct. 7 found that nationwide farmers say their economic condition is weakening. Despite expected record-high corn and soybean yields, farmers report they expect weaker financial performance in 2025 than in 2024 and have a weaker capital investment outlook.
Yet even as optimism about the farm economy is fading, support for Trump among farmers remains strong.
Back in March, 70% of farmers who answered the Purdue survey said they believed tariffs would strengthen the agricultural economy in the long run. That number dropped steeply to 51% by September. Still a large majority — 71% – continue to believe the country as a whole is moving in the right direction, and 80% believe the Trump administration is likely or very likely to give them an aid package to compensate for the damage done by tariffs and trade wars.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wisconsin) reinforced this hope on the WRDN radio podcast from the World Dairy Expo in Madison last week. Tiffany, who is running for governor, was asked what he says to farmers who are “fed up” with Trump’s tariffs. He replied that Trump tariffs are not going away, but, he said of the administration, “they’re gonna use some of that tariff revenue, which is significant, to help farmers out. Because they know, I mean, President Trump has no better friends than the farmers of America.”
Trump has suggested he will unveil another farm bailout as he did during his first administration, when China responded to steep tariffs by scaling back purchases of U.S. agricultural products.
The problem with the bailout solution, says Gbenga Ajilore, chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and former senior adviser for rural development at USDA, is that the revenue generated by tariffs that Trump proposes to convert into handouts to farmers comes directly from the farmers themselves.
“It’s not even like robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s like robbing Peter to pay Peter,” Ajilore said in a phone interview Wednesday. “What’s happening is that there are tariffs on a lot of goods — looking at steel, aluminum, looking at fertilizers. So farmers are paying more for their inputs. We’re seeing this impacting these companies like Caterpillar, John Deere. And so you can say there’s a lot of revenue, but it’s coming out of the pockets of consumers, businesses and farmers.”
If farmers are not already feeling seasick as the Trump administration spins the ag economy around on a cycle of tariffs and bailouts, the administration’s immigration crackdown is also making them queasy.
A panel discussion at last week’s World Dairy Expo focused on a labor shortage made worse by a Trump administration that seems hell-bent on deporting the agricultural workforce.
Rocks are heavy. Trees are made of wood. Gravity is real. If we deport every single person that is working in the agriculture industry, the hospitality industry and the construction industry, all of those industries will shutter in a moment's notice.
– U.S. Rep Derrick Van Orden
The recent ICE action that scooped up 24 dairy workers in Manitowoc, most of whom had no criminal records, and deportations of entire crews of legally present H2A workers in Texas had farmers who attended the discussion worried.
“Taking hard-working employees off farms does not make communities safer,” said Brain Rexing, a dairy farmer from Indiana. He described the Hispanic workers on his farm as “way more than employees. — they work together with me and my family side to side.”
Like other farmers, he said, he goes to bed at night worrying about his workers and wakes up in the morning worrying about them. Instead of threatening farmworkers with deportation, Rexing and other farmers at the Expo said, Congress should finally get around to creating a year-round visa that recognizes their essential contributions to the U.S. economy.
U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisconsin) spoke to the group and assured them that the Trump administration has their back. He had personally spoken with Elon Musk he said. “I was like, hey, Elon, there’s two groups of people in the United States that we need to really watch out for. One of them are service members and veterans, because they gave us our freedom and keep us free. And the second one are our farmers, because they feed us. .. So he really zoned in on that and grasped it,” Van Orden said.
Another “incredibly, incredibly strong proponent of the dairy industry,” he added, “is Tom Homan.” Homan is Trump’s border czar and the architect of the family separation policy during the first Trump administration. “He was raised on a dairy farm,” Van Orden said. “So keep that in mind. There are some people in D.C. that understand what’s going on. We’re trying our best to help you. So I would just ask that you stay in the business and that God will bless you.”
It was not the most reassuring speech. But Van Orden also asked the dairy farmers in the room to support his proposal for a new system to make their workforce legal, which would impose a fine on employers and dairy workers and then require the workers to self-deport before returning to the country under a new federal program that would allow them to do their jobs legally. He introduced the bill in July and it was referred to the House Agriculture Committee, of which he is a member.
The farmers, understandably, had a lot of questions.
What was their workers’ incentive to participate? How long would it take the government to process their paperwork, remove them from the country and let them back in again? How do they know they won’t be deported as soon as they come back?
These are reasonable fears, given the terrifying scenes of ICE grabbing people off the street, busting down doors and zip-tying parents and children, sweeping up people with and without legal authorization to be in the country, whether or not they have committed any crime.
Recently, even the Trump administration’s Labor Department declared that the nation’s food system faces an emergency due to the administration’s aggressive mass deportation program, warning in a federal filing uncovered by the American Prospect that the immigration crackdown on agricultural workers has created a significant “risk of supply shock-induced food shortages.”
“The Department does not believe American workers currently unemployed or marginally employed will make themselves readily available in sufficient numbers to replace large numbers of aliens,” the filing states, contradicting Trump administration rhetoric about immigrants stealing American jobs.
Farmers are getting it in so many ways; their exports are down, their costs are up, and they’re losing their workforce.
– Gbenga Ajilore, former USDA economist
The solution proposed by Trump’s labor department is to pay H2A seasonal agricultural workers even less — offsetting the cost to employers of a terrified workforce that is disinclined to show up to work after ICE raids.
It seems like a weird solution, as David Dayen of the American Prospect observed, “since cutting wages across the sector will likely drive existing workers to look elsewhere for jobs.”
But there is a dark logic behind the move to slash wages for agricultural workers in the midst of the moral panic over immigration. Dayen quotes Antonio De Loera-Brust of the United Farm Workers, who sees a government threatening mass deportations working hand in glove with employers who benefit from a powerless immigrant workforce.
“We call it the ‘Deport and Replace’ strategy,” De Loera-Brust said, “which is defined above all to make it easier for corporate agribusiness to exploit its workers, whether terrified undocumented residents or an unlimited pool of cheap foreign guest workers … The Trump administration would rather expand the abusive H-2A program than do right by the workers who are already here, feeding America for decades.”
This situation does not directly apply to Wisconsin dairy farms, since dairy workers are not eligible for H2A visas. But it was not at all clear from Van Orden’s remarks at the World Dairy Expo that he understands that fact.
“The H2A program is broken and it sucks. There you go. That’s the whole press conference,” he said after he was introduced. Later, he referred to “all this garbage you’ve been dealing with, these H2As and H2Bs” insisting his own proposal for a new visa system would work better. In fact, dairy farmers are not dealing with the H2A (seasonal) or H2B (non-agricultural) visa systems at all.
Van Orden did acknowledge the difficult situation for the dairy industry, which depends on a labor force 60% to 90% of which is made up of immigrants who lack any sort of legal authorization to be in the country, since there is no such thing as a year-round visa for low-skilled work.
“Rocks are heavy. Trees are made of wood. Gravity is real. If we deport every single person that is working in the agriculture industry, the hospitality industry and the construction industry, all of those industries will shutter in a moment’s notice,” Van Orden declared.
But it’s unclear if his plan, the Agricultural Workforce Reform Act of 2025, will help.
One farmer asked if his workers would be barred from returning to the U.S. if they committed a traffic violation (a common concern in Wisconsin, where immigrants without legal papers cannot get a driver’s license). Van Orden fobbed him off, saying that would be a question for the executive branch to resolve through its rule-making process.
Several farmers listening to Van Orden affirmed that they supported Trump’s goal of securing the border, but added that they thought that mission had been accomplished. Now they hoped the administration would turn its attention to a new public safety issue — the threat mass deportations pose to the U.S. food supply.
Farmers across the country seem inclined to give the Trump administration the benefit of the doubt. But the doubt is growing.
“Farmers are getting it in so many ways; their exports are down, their costs are up, and they’re losing their workforce,” said Ajilore, the former USDA economist. Given all that, farmer sentiment “actually hasn’t really moved as much as you would expect, given what’s happening,” he said. He attributes it to a wait-and-see attitude among farmers who have faithfully supported Trump for years. But now, he added, “the impact is starting to really hit home.”
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A PFAS advisory sign along Starkweather Creek. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
More than two years after $125 million was set aside in the 2023-25 state budget to fund the remediation of PFAS contamination across Wisconsin, legislators are again trying to pass two bills to get that money out the door.
At a Senate public hearing Tuesday, the bills’ Republican authors said they’re “all ears” for reaching a compromise on final language. However in the last legislative session, initial hopes that a deal could be reached went unfulfilled after Republicans, Democrats, business groups and environmental organizations dug into their positions and the bill was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers.
As was the case in the last effort, the dispute is over who and how the state will hold entities responsible for PFAS contamination.
PFAS are a class of man-made chemical compounds commonly known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily in the environment. The chemicals, which were used for decades in goods such as non-stick pans, fast food wrappers and firefighting foams, have been connected to causing cancer, thyroid diseases and developmental problems. Communities across Wisconsin have found PFAS contamination in their water supplies.
Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto), one of the bills’ co-authors, said at the Tuesday hearing he’s trying to make sure people don’t have to choose between “their health and financial ruin” by testing for contamination and potentially being held responsible for paying for the clean up under the state’s spills law — which allows the Department of Natural Resources to force “responsible parties” to pay for the testing and remediation of chemical contamination.
“We are transitioning from a medical and legal paradigm where a widely used substance was not considered hazardous, to a paradigm where it is considered hazardous, it’s imperative we don’t sweep up those who are not responsible and treat them as though they are,” he said.
Wimberger and Rep. Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz) have proposed Senate Bills 127 and 128, which establish the exemptions under which people won’t be held responsible for PFAS contamination on their property and create a number of grant programs to spend the $125 million.
The challenge is that Republicans and industry have different definitions of who counts as responsible for contamination than Democrats and environmental groups. Constructing exemptions to the spills law that are too narrow could result in people being forced to pay for remediation they didn’t cause. But writing the exemptions too broadly could result in polluters passing the cost of remediation on to taxpayers.
Across the state, municipal wastewater treatment utilities sell or give away the byproducts of their plants to use as fertilizer on farm fields. The DNR grants permits to allow the spreading of these byproducts, known as biosolids, which for years was seen as an environmentally responsible source of fertilizer because it was recycled. However biosolids from places with PFAS contamination in the water are contaminated, which can pollute the water near the field where they’re spread.
Wimberger wants to make sure these farmers aren’t on the hook with the DNR to pay for contamination they didn’t know was happening and the DNR gave them a permit to create.
But environmental advocates don’t want the exemptions to be so vague that they’re available to entities such as paper mills or chemical manufacturers.
“We’re just asking you to understand that the way that you word an exemption is going to matter,” Christine Sieger, director of the DNR’s remediation and redevelopment bureau, said in her testimony. “I implement the spill law all day, every day, and I can tell you, people are crafty when it comes to getting out of liability. They will come up with all sorts of ways for how they can get themselves off the hook. And I just, I don’t want you to help them do that. Let’s make sure that they can take care of our people and clean up the mess that they’ve made.”
After the proposed PFAS bill was vetoed by Evers last session, Wimberger complained that opponents raised concerns about the exemptions being too broadly worded without naming specifics. On Tuesday, he said people objected with “platitudes” rather than specific language that could be corrected and that he hoped opponents could be more constructive this time around.
Erik Kanter, director of government relations for Clean Wisconsin, said Tuesday the organization couldn’t support the proposal without amendments, proposing specific line-by-line changes for the bill authors to make.
Kanter pointed to a line in SB 128 that states “a person that spreads biosolids or wastewater residuals contaminated by PFAS in compliance with any applicable license or permit” is exempt from being held responsible for PFAS contamination under the spills law. However, he said, that line is so vaguely worded that an industrial manufacturer could purchase and spread biosolids on its property as a way to gain an exemption from being held responsible for contamination it caused by creating PFAS as a byproduct of manufacturing.
“The Legislature created the PFAS trust fund 29 months ago,” Kanter said. “Marinette, Peshtigo, the Town of Campbell, the town of Stella and communities and individuals throughout the state have waited and waited and waited for state government to create the programs through which the PFAS trust fund can be allocated. They don’t deserve to wait another day. They don’t deserve a bill that doesn’t meet their needs or lets polluters off the hook and saddles taxpayers with the bill. We believe that compromise is possible and essential. We value the bill authors’ partnership to find compromise on this bill. Clean Wisconsin shares their goal in getting a bill to the governor’s desk for his signature this session, and we will continue working in good faith toward that end.”
Both Mursau and Wimberger expressed hope that they could write an amendment that would get enough support to be signed into law.
“It’s my intention to take the feedback here … and bring forward the amendment that can earn the support of the Legislature to be signed into law by the governor,” Mursau said. “I also want to take this opportunity to thank the groups and individuals who have come to us, not just with criticisms, but with constructive ideas. Those who are willing to engage in dialogue, not just opposition, have been instrumental in helping us shape the legislation that can actually pass and deliver results. In a divided government like ours, meaningful progress requires compromise. I’m grateful for those who recognize that and continue to work with us in good faith.”
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Republican lawmakers say their bills to address PFAS would offer financial aid and protect innocent landowners from footing the bill for contamination they didn’t cause. But state regulators argue the proposals would still let polluters off the hook.
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A new bill in the state legislature would ban hemp-derived THC products in Wisconsin. Producers say it would destroy their businesses.
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Decades of research has shown that setting aside 10 percent of a farm field for wildlife habitat is beneficial for both the environment and agricultural production long term.
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A large dairy with farms in Columbia and Dane counties is proposing to grow its herd by more than 60 percent in the next five years as part of plans to consolidate its two facilities into one location.
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U.S. counties with large animal feeding operations also often have higher air pollution and lower health insurance coverage. More research is needed to understand the correlation, a researcher says.
The post University of Michigan study finds large animal farms might be a significant source of air pollution appeared first on WPR.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is expecting a strong corn and soybean harvest this year. But low crop prices, high input costs and international trade uncertainty could hurt farmers.
The post Crops look good across the Midwest and Great Plains. But farmers still face tough economy appeared first on WPR.
One of Wisconsin’s most iconic aquatic plants has been in decline in recent years. A project to reseed wild rice in one of Wisconsin’s largest lakes was rocked when the Trump administration abruptly pulled millions in funding earlier this year.
The post Lake Winnebago wild rice restoration project continues despite federal funding cut appeared first on WPR.
In the state known as America's Dairyland, Wisconsin law sets penalties for selling margarine unless it's clearly labeled as such. Now, lawmakers are are considering similar requirements for lab-grown meat.
The post A label for lab-grown meat? Bill would require disclosure at grocery stores, restaurants appeared first on WPR.
A Manitowoc County dairy worker arrived for her shift early on a Thursday morning in late September and waited for a message from her husband. It’s their routine, she said: rise early, commute to jobs at separate dairies and check in by phone.
“But when I called him, he didn’t answer,” she said in Spanish. “And so I was calling and calling and I said, ‘something happened, because he’s not answering – that’s not normal.’”
Her husband, Abraham Maldonado Almanza, was among the 24 people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Manitowoc County on Sept. 25. As far as she knows, officers picked Maldonado Almanza up in the Walmart parking lot where dairy workers gather to carpool hours before sunrise. Within a matter of days, he had — at least from her perspective — effectively vanished, carried away at breakneck speed by the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown.
The pace of enforcement operations, lack of transparency and sudden shifts in policy have disoriented both those targeted in the crackdown and immigration attorneys already managing overwhelming caseloads.
A Department of Homeland Security press release tied the arrests to a joint operation with the FBI, IRS and other federal law enforcement agencies targeting an alleged human and drug trafficking ring. Neither DHS nor the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin responded to inquiries about whether the investigation has resulted in criminal charges against any of those arrested last month, nor did federal district court dockets point to criminal charges resulting from the investigation as of Friday.
Over the following days, the dairy worker says she made her way through a list of immigration attorneys’ phone numbers, none of whom agreed to take her husband’s case. She attributed the reluctance to a preexisting removal order on her husband’s record, which can speed the deportation process. But without a reliable source of information, she was left relying on hearsay to keep track of Abraham’s case.
As the federal government entered a shutdown on Wednesday, several Wisconsin immigration attorneys said they were surprised to hear that, unlike during other shutdowns in recent memory, immigration court hearings for clients not in ICE detention would continue as planned.
Attorneys had not expected the shutdown to slow down the cases of immigrants in detention, but the speed of operations has still caught some off guard. Some of those arrested in Manitowoc County last month were already out of the country days before Congress missed its funding deadline, according to Aissa Olivarez, an attorney with the Community Immigration Law Center in Madison.
“Historically, people are taken to (the Dodge County Jail) and we’re able to at least do an intake and speak with them before anything else happens,” Olivarez said. “But it seems like in this operation, they knew who they were looking for, or exactly what they were going to do. … They did this really, really fast.”
As of Friday, three of the six arrestees named in a DHS press release about the Manitowoc County operation were still in the Dodge County Jail, according to ICE’s detainee locator tool.
Maldonado Almanza was not among them, though his name and photograph appeared in the press release, which also claimed he had a prior conviction for identity theft.
Wisconsin circuit court records yield no matching criminal record, nor do trial court records in Iowa, where his wife says they lived after emigrating from Mexico and before moving to Wisconsin. Iowa court records do, however, reflect that Maldonado Almanza was fined for driving without insurance in 2009.
As first reported by the Wisconsin Examiner, another man named in the September DHS press release on the Manitowoc County operation had been in ICE custody since July. That man, Jose Hilario Moreno Portillo, was charged with second-degree sexual assault of a child in Manitowoc County in May.
The dairy worker said her husband had previously received a deportation order in an immigration court case that began while the couple was living in Iowa. That detail matches Olivarez’s understanding of the Manitowoc operation. “It does seem like there were people who have been ordered deported before,” she said. In those cases, “without a quick stay of removal or motion to reopen, the government executes that removal order right away.”
“Because there is such a low capacity (of attorneys) in the state in general, when people already have removal orders, we can’t work fast enough to stop it,” she added.
Maldonado Almanza’s whereabouts remained unclear as of Friday.
Milwaukee immigration attorney John Sesini says his firm took the case of another man picked up in the Manitowoc operation only to discover he had been deported to Mexico within four days of his arrest. The man had no criminal record, Sesini said, and it remains unclear whether he had a prior deportation order. If not, it may still be possible to challenge the deportation in court.
Only about a third of immigrants in Wisconsin with upcoming hearings in federal immigration court have legal representation. Unlike courts operated by the federal judiciary, immigration courts – part of the U.S. Department of Justice – do not provide free representation. Instead, immigrants must pay out of pocket, rely on the few free and low-cost legal services organizations like Olivarez’s legal center or face the courts alone. Those able to find attorneys are vastly more likely to avoid deportation than those who attempt to represent themselves.
For some immigrants facing court dates in the coming weeks, a typical government shutdown could have provided breathing room. In past shutdowns, the DOJ has typically deemed only the cases of immigrants in detention “essential” enough to move forward. The shutdown from late December 2018 to mid-January 2019, for instance, forced the cancellation of at least 80,000 hearings nationwide, according to immigration court records analyzed by the nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
A Wisconsin Watch analysis of federal immigration court data suggests that as of August, almost 1,000 immigrants with Wisconsin addresses had hearings scheduled for October. So far, the DOJ has not called off those hearings en masse, though the agency has also not clarified whether immigration courts will continue holding hearings of immigrants who are not detained during a prolonged shutdown.
But in a press release issued on Wednesday, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin underscored that the shutdown will not slow ICE. “The deportations will continue,” she wrote.
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Tens of thousands of people attended the World Dairy Expo in Madison. The annual trade show also includes competitions, which some describe as akin to bovine beauty pageants.
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Dairy cows huddle at sunset on a farm in Manitowoc County. Advocates and farmers say an ICE raid that took 24 migrants into custody Sept. 25 poses a threat to the state’s dairy farms and the immigrant workers that keep the industry afloat. (Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner)
The morning of Sept. 25, federal agents and immigration authorities swept into Manitowoc to arrest people alleged to be in the country without proper documentation. Agents first went to a Walmart parking lot where dairy workers are known to meet up before driving to the farms where they work. The action then moved on to private residences, where migrants were arrested as they left the house.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security claims the ICE raid in Manitowoc was aimed at dismantling an international sex and drug trafficking ring, but has so far provided little evidence to support that claim. Federal authorities initially said 21 migrants had been arrested in the raid, before later saying 24 had been picked up.
On Tuesday, DHS released the names of six of the 24. Only one individual named in the release has been charged with a sex crime — Jose Hilario Moreno Portillo, who was charged in Manitowoc County court in May with the 2nd degree sexual assault of a child. However, Moreno Portillo has not yet been convicted and court records show he’s been in ICE custody since July.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment on why Moreno Portillo was named as being arrested in the Manitowoc action when he was already in ICE custody.
The five other named individuals have been convicted of identity theft, hit-and-run, disorderly conduct, driving under the influence, possession of narcotic equipment, traffic offenses and a failure to appear charge.
In Wisconsin, immigrants without documentation aren’t able to obtain driver’s licenses, which often causes them to wrack up several criminal traffic offenses when they’re pulled over and ticketed for driving without a license.
With little proof that ICE actually broke up a ring of sex traffickers, immigration advocates and farm groups see the raid as a direct threat to the state’s dairy farms and the immigrant workers that keep the industry afloat.
Farmers and immigrant advocates in Wisconsin have been watching ICE’s actions on dairy farms across the country closely. In March, ICE raided a dairy farm and petting zoo in New York. In April, a raid on a dairy farm in Vermont resulted in eight arrests. And in early June, ICE arrested 11 immigrants in a raid on a dairy farm in New Mexico.
But so far, enforcement against undocumented people on dairy farms had been sporadic and far from the Midwest. In June, President Donald Trump announced and then retreated from guidance that ICE would not aggressively target farms and the hospitality industry.
While last Thursday’s raid in Manitowoc didn’t take place on a dairy farm, most of the individuals arrested were dairy workers. Beyond that, they were dairy workers in the county with the highest concentration of dairy factory farms in the state. Manitowoc County and its northeast Wisconsin neighbors are the epicenter of the modern farming powerhouse that maintains Wisconsin’s status as “America’s Dairyland.”
“It’s just sending an economic ripple effect across the dairy industry, which is Wisconsin’s rural economy,” says Luis Velasquez, statewide organizing director for immigrant advocacy group Voces de la Frontera. “And then also there’s the symbolic and political dimension to it as well. We are America’s Dairyland, and so this enforcement is not just an administrative matter, but it threatens the industry’s well being. Who are we going to be after all of this? Are we still going to be America’s Dairyland?”
Velasquez says the raid sent a “big anxiety wave” through immigrant communities across the state.
“These views have just spiraled out of control in terms of the rumors that have been sent out across the community, rumors of ICE coming into their neighborhoods, to their homes, to their schools,” Velasquez says.
“I have had serious conversations since the raid in Manitowoc of folks who are planning to leave after many years of being here,” he adds. “They just don’t feel like this is a humane lifestyle anymore. They’ve given many years of their lives, and many of them have children here.”
Michael Slattery, a Manitowoc County farmer who grows grain and raises Holstein steers, points to data that shows 70% of the labor on Wisconsin’s dairy farms comes from immigrants and estimates that the dairy industry is the driver of 20% of Manitowoc County’s economy.
Slattery says farmers can’t survive without that migrant labor because no one else is willing to do the work.
“Do you want to get up at 3 a.m. seven days a week to go out in the cold, the heat, to get kicked by cows when you’re putting the suction cups on, to be shat upon, pissed on, pushed around by 1,400 pound cows? People don’t want that,” he says. “I’ve tried to hire part time labor here, I cannot get people, they don’t want to do this sort of stuff.”
Simply expecting farm families to pick up the slack isn’t the answer, he adds. “These dairy farms, they don’t have enough family members that can come out and replace immigrant labor, both documented and undocumented, that are leaving,” Slattery says. “They’re in a money-losing situation now.”
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Losing the dairy labor force would have ripple effects across the economy in Wisconsin and the country.
“What do they do in that situation? If your cows cannot be milked, in two, two and a half weeks they’ll go dry,” he says. “The cows get milk fever, get ill, that’s your cheap hamburger in the stores. They’re selling the cows at a loss, that’s what they’ll do. There’s less milk in the market, that will drive up prices for cheese, milk and butter.”
Danielle Endvick, executive director of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, says if Wisconsin’s immigrant workers leave the state — either from being arrested by ICE or leaving on their own to avoid arrest — farms could close and prices could increase.
“Immigration raids and mass deportations can shrink rural economies, are terribly destabilizing for communities and can harm schools, churches, just the fabric of our rural communities too,” Endvick says. “Our rural spaces, our farmers can’t thrive if we’re treating a key workforce like they’re disposable. I think that immigrant workers are essential to Wisconsin dairy, and that when they are threatened, farmers in our rural communities are threatened too.”
Another commercial poultry facility in Jefferson County must cull more than half a million birds due to highly pathogenic avian influenza.
The post Bird flu detected at another Jefferson County poultry facility appeared first on WPR.
Some USDA office functions will be suspended during the government shutdown. (USDA Photo by Lance Cheung)
Nearly half of U.S. Department of Agriculture employees will be furloughed during the federal government shutdown, though key programs that support nutrition, forest preservation and wildfire prevention, the most pressing plant and animal diseases and agricultural commodity assessments will continue.
Many offices, including county USDA service centers, will be closed or operating with minimal staff until Congress agrees on a temporary spending package. Support, payment processing and other functions of these offices are also suspended during the shutdown.
Congress failed to pass a stopgap spending bill Tuesday which resulted in the start of a government shutdown at midnight and federal agencies had to implement the contingency plans required by the Office of Management and Budget.
According to the contingency plan filed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only a handful of agency operations will continue during the shutdown. The primary objective is that agencies cannot incur financial obligations if the funding source has lapsed and any planned or in-the-works activities that would incur new obligations, must cease.
Activities that may continue during the shutdown include those that are financed by something other than current year appropriations, expressly authorized to continue, either by law or by necessary implication, necessary to the presidential duties and powers or related to emergencies that endanger human life or the protection of property.
According to the plan, more than 42,000 USDA employees are expected to be furloughed during the shutdown. That’s about half of the more than 85,000 employees the agency said would be “on board” prior to the shutdown.
USDA programs that will continue despite the shutdown:
Under the contingency plan, USDA functions like ongoing research, reports, outreach and technical assistance are suspended. The agency will also stop processing payments and disaster assistance.
Trade negotiations, hazardous fuel treatments, special use permits, regulatory work, training and travel by USDA employees and agencies are also suspended.
According to the contingency plan, most functions are suspended for the Risk Management Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Foreign Agricultural Service, Food and Nutrition Service, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Economic Research Service, National Agricultural Statistical Service, Rural Development, and staff offices.
Website updates are also suspended under the shutdown. A banner atop the USDA website informs visitors that the website will not be updated “due to the Radical Left Democrat shutdown.”
“President Trump has made it clear he wants to keep the government open and support those who feed, fuel, and clothe the American people,” the banner reads.
According to the plan, “all activities will cease” for the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and her office during the shutdown.
Approximately 67% of Farm Service Agency, or FSA, employees will be furloughed. According to the plan, selected leadership at headquarters and USDA offices will stay on during the shut down. This means county service centers, and the majority of the services they offer, will not be available during the shutdown.
Nearly all, 1135 out of 1237 employees, at the Food and Nutrition Service offices were projected to be furloughed during the shutdown, though according to the plan, enough employees remain to facilitate SNAP, child nutrition programs and WIC. WIC must make unspent funds from past years available in order to continue operations through October.
Close to 20,000 of the 32,390 Forest Service employees will continue to work on certain approved areas of agency work, like wildfire prevention, protection of federal land and federal directives to expand timber production. Public access to recreation sites managed by the department will be reduced, according to the plan.
A significant portion of Agricultural Marketing Service operations are funded by previous farm bill appropriations or by user fees, so services like the Federal Grain Inspection Service and dairy grading will continue, as will market news information.
Operations like country of origin labeling, the packers and stockyards program, the national organic program, shell egg surveillance and the pesticide data program will be suspended.
The plan calls for a number of reconsiderations in the event the shutdown persists longer than 5 days. This could include, for example a farm loan employee or other staff member on call at USDA service centers, or the reinstatement of some furloughed employees to deal with wildfire management.
Glenn “GT” Thompson, chair of the House Committee on Agriculture, blamed Democrats, who demanded extentions to the Affordable Care Act be added to the stopgap spending bill, for shutting down the government and putting “critical USDA services in jeopardy.”
“These political games harm rural America through disruptions to farm payments, disaster relief, food assistance, and other critical services,” the Republican from Pennsylvania said in a statement. “Performative photo ops at state fairs and lip service to the producers who feed, fuel, and clothe our country won’t hide the truth—Democrats forcing a government shutdown only inflicts more pain on our agricultural economy.”
This story was originally produced by Iowa Capital Dispatch, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Photo by Gregory Conniff for Wisconsin Examiner
Wisconsin farms applied about 16 million pounds more nitrogen than necessary to their fields in 2022, according to a recently released report from Clean Wisconsin and Alliance for the Great Lakes.
The excess application of fertilizer poses serious risks to public health, raises costs for people who get their water from public utilities or private wells and increases costs for farmers, the report found.
Throughout the report, the environmental groups included input from residents who have had their health and wallets affected by nitrate pollution.
“I own a daycare center, and the mental toll of just staying in business because I did not cause the contamination of my well and yet am expected to solve the problem is exhausting…” Kewaunee County resident Lisa Cochart says in the report. “This could put me out of business. I work hard to provide my community with a service that assures that each child is receiving the best care and it can be shut down because of a nitrate test that I cannot control.”
The report makes a number of recommendations to better track the amount of nitrogen spread on Wisconsin’s fields and in Wisconsin’s water systems while better enforcing regulations meant to protect drinking water. But agricultural industry representatives have said the report places too much burden on farmers — even though agriculture produces up to 90% of the nitrogen in the state’s groundwater.
“Wisconsin cannot afford to delay. The cost of inaction — both financial and human — is rising,” the report states. “A coordinated, science-based policy response is essential to reduce nitrate pollution at its source, protect public health and ecosystems, and ensure clean, safe drinking water for future generations.”
The report recommends tougher state standards for nitrates, improved enforcement of nutrient management plans on individual farms, creating a statewide registration system for manure haulers and requiring regular groundwater monitoring for factory farms. It also proposes collecting data on the cost of nitrogen contamination to public water systems, expanding the state’s existing private well compensation program and increasing the state’s nitrogen fertilizer tonnage fees.
While the report’s recommendations are aimed at a wide range of policy areas and farming is the major source of nitrogen contamination, dairy industry representatives have pushed back on its findings. Tim Trotter, CEO of the Dairy Business Association, told Wisconsin Public Radio farmers are already doing enough voluntarily to address the problem.
“Our work with solutions-minded environmental groups and other stakeholders through a statewide clean water initiative has resulted in tailored changes to programs and policies that open up more opportunities for on-farm innovation that addresses this important issue,” Trotter said. “Reports like this one do little to bring practical, achievable solutions to water quality challenges, and can be counterproductive to progress.”
In the past, the Dairy Business Association has sued state regulators to weaken the state’s ability to regulate pollution sources such as runoff.
The report states that the state Legislature and the courts have limited the authorities of state agencies, including the Department of Natural Resources and Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, preventing them from doing all that is necessary to manage the contamination.
“Because Wisconsin administrative agencies have been severely limited in their ability to establish new regulations, they have relied heavily on voluntary incentives, such as cost-sharing and price supports to incentivize farmers to implement conservation measures,” the report states. “However, it is clear that these voluntary incentives alone aren’t enough to solve Wisconsin’s nitrate problems.”
The report also found that in applying more nitrogen fertilizer than necessary, Wisconsin’s farmers are spending $8-$11 million more each year than they need to — “dollars that could be saved with more precise application.”
More than one-third of the state’s residents get their drinking water from private wells, which are especially susceptible to nitrate contamination. The report recommends expanding the well compensation program, but adds that is just a band-aid solution.
The program also limits participation to residents making less than $60,000 per year and includes a number of requirements that further restrict who is eligible, even if their wells exceed the state’s nitrate standard of 10 milligrams per liter, according to the report.
Instead, the report argues, the state needs to better work to keep nitrates out of the groundwater in the first place.
“Well compensation programs, while vital for near-term relief, are ultimately a stopgap,” the report states. “They do not address the root cause of nitrate pollution. Without stronger upstream controls on nitrate pollution, more families will face the high cost and growing scarcity of access to safe drinking water.”
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